The Hartman Institute's RLI Peer Roundtable: Rabbis Teaching Rabbis

One of the hallmarks of the Shalom Hartman Institute's Religious Leadership Initiative rabbininc fellowship program (RLI) is the peer led roundtable; a session in which each member of the RLI cohort teaches a text or presents a programmatic idea to his or her colleagues.  Regardless of the kind of rabbinate we've pursued - pulpit, formal education, Jewish camping, etc. - Rabbis are accustomed to teaching individuals of different ages and backgrounds.  The RLI roundtable is unique and special in that it enables us to teach our peers; a daunting, yet exhilarating endeavor.  It's one thing to teach a group of lay people and quite another to present a text or idea to a room full of colleagues who know as much if not more than you.

Today my colleague, Rabbi Jonathan Hecht, led a fascinating and compelling roundtable session on a subject of historical significance, and did it with aplomb.  He presented primary sources related to the Barcelona Disputation of 1263.  The debate took place between Dominican friar Pablo Christiani (a Jewish convert to Catholism) and Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (Nachmanides) and in the presence of King James I of Aragon.  Leading us through both Nachmanides' and the Latin written accounts of the disputation, Rabbi Hecht argued that a crititical turn had taken place; namely, the Church transitioned from burning rabbinic texts like the Talmud to using those texts to prove the validity and merit of Christianity in an attempt to convert Jews to the Christian faith.  Rabbi Hecht also held up Nachmanides as a dugma, an exemplar, of the courageous rabbinic leader who jeapordized his life by defending Judaism in a hostile polemical arena and later publishing his account to provide much needed moral support to an embattled and oppressed Jewish community.  He encouraged all of us to follow the Ramban's example of heroic religious leadership

As the roundtable came to a conclusion Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi, the director of our RLI  program, asked us the key, overarching and crucial question: "What is today's disputation?"  I would argue that it's an internal one.  The parties involved are Jewish and the forum in which it takes place is within the Jewish community.  The disputation is about the very controversial issue of political discourse relating to the State of Israel.  I think Rabbi Sabath Beit-Halachmi's question was really a rhetorical one.  How can we as Jewish religious leaders help to engender a respectful and empathetic discourse that can heal our community and unite us rather than divide us over the one issue that has, up until this point, always kept our multi-denominational community together?

In the wake of the disputation Nachmanides had to flee Aragon and seek refuge in Eretz Israel.  He might have won the battle but in the end he personally lost the war.  We can ill afford a similar pyrrhic victory; one where a significant segment of the Jewish community feels as though it has been delegitimized and set apart.